A group of Australian and New Zealand doctors visiting Papua New Guinea has been inundated with work after setting up a temporary clinic in the country's Western Highlands.

The team from the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists are half way through a two-week surgical trip to Port Moresby and Mount Hagen. And they have been faced with more patients than they can treat.

"We are performing advanced paediatric surgery on children who have no access to this sort of expertise," said Dr Michael Cooper

Dr Cooper, from Sydney's Children's Hospital at Westmead, is one of the surgeons currently in Mount Hagen and has told Pacific Beat the workload on these trips is always high.

"The local surgeons usually publicise our trip ahead of time through the local radio... and a lot of patients come in. We always have an enormous clinic when we arrive and the patients keep on wandering in through the ensuing days while we're operating.

"The disappointing part of that for us is that there's more work than we can possibly get through in one week." he said.

During the first week of the trip, the team has been faced with a lot of sick babies and has had to perform a lot of bowel operations.

"One of them was a baby with all the bowel born outside of the abdomen, which is a very challenging condition. Most of these babies, or nearly all of them die in PNG.

"This baby had its first surgery... when it was four days old. And we'll be taking it back to surgery [Friday] for a second operation." Dr Cooper said.

Training mission

The medical team has also been working without the benefit of an intensive care unit (ICU) for critically ill patients. Papua New Guinea's only ICU is in the capital Port Moresby.

"So trying to undertake this sort of surgery with a successful outcome is a real challenge." Dr Cooper said.

They have also treated children with conditions ranging from cancer to kids requiring special operations for fluid on the brain.

It's a real diversity of pathology that we see and there's got to be a bit of versatility in the team to cope with everything." he said.

Dr Cooper and Associate Professor Albert Shun have also been training local surgeons and anaesthetists.

Dr Cooper has been training a team of local anaesthetists.

"I've been busy running two operating theatres with them doing all the work and me supervising them and our surgeon from Sydney, Dr Shun, operating and supervising the local surgeons.

"It's certainly a busy trip, but at the same time the important thing is teaching the local doctors what to do and they've really enjoyed it." he said.

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